The Awful Weight

"Be careful what you ask for." Sage advice.

I often wonder, perhaps now more than ever, whether those who serve as president or prime minister, or other significant positions of leadership - even down to the tactical levels, really knew what they asked for when pursuing the position. Leadership means engaging real problems and making decisions - decisions which history may prove ill-advised or wrong.
Yesterday we explored the subject of intelligence - the "ultra" secret - the decoding of the German Enigma machine. Were you to be asked,
if you served as Prime Minister of England, "would you like to the ability to read the German correspondence during this war?", what would you answer? Certainly yes!
With that knowledge the weight of leadership would greatly increase on Mr. Churchill, who already bore an immense load. Why? Shouldn't this information make the job easier, not more difficult?
Consider one dilemma brought on by this new knowledge. Your intelligence branch intercepts messages from the German air forces indicating plans for bombing English cities. This in itself is not new information, as the Germans have been bombing for some time. What is new is information indicating attacks on a location previously untouched by German air assaults.
The dilemma: should you, as Prime Minister, take action in that previously untouched city to protect it and the people living there? If you do, you can probably save lives and precious property. If you do, you will also tip your hand as to the knowledge you possess.
Is it worth saving lives now but losing the means to save lives and make strategic decisions down the road? Or, is it worth (if words like "worth" can be used here) sacrificing lives and parts of a city now to keep the knowledge secret for lives and cities and battles in the future?
Thus, the awful weight of leadership.
F.W. Winterbotham wrote in The Ultra Secret, that such a decision faced Mr. Churchill about the city of Coventry on 14 November 1940. He was privy to a German message which accidentally, according to his book, broadcast the word "Coventry" in the clear. He said he passed the message to Churchill's personal secretary, warning of the pending attack several hours before its occurrence. The city was heavily bombed with minimal RAF resistance, destroying the famous cathedral pictured here along with hundreds killed.

It is not certain Churchill knew and could have done anything to spare Coventry. Others have disputed that Churchill had the information and made a decision to let Coventry be destroyed. This has been debated for many years.
The possession of a secret nonetheless makes demands upon the possessor to weigh and measure carefully each response, each public statement, even when one's actions are questioned. It is even more important now as television and the internet allow for dissection of every word spoken by a leader to see if what is said reveals the source of information informing a particular decision.